City of Salem
Youth Commission
Meeting Minutes
Tuesday, November 13, 2007
5:30 pm
In Attendance: Deb Amaral, Eileen Dunn, Ryan Heath, Zachary Broughton, Tom Watkins
Introduction & Outreach
The group introduced themselves. Zachary said he would continue in his efforts to outreach to student reps at the High School, in particular, Eric Fialho and Crisanthe Theodorakakis. Deb would also like a representative from the group Parents United for Salem and will outreach to them about joining.
Community Calendar
It was discussed that the process of updating the Community Calendar needs to be more defined. As of right now, the group will stick to its policy of allowing only league sign ups and start dates as well as special events which are for youths only. The group agreed that guidelines need to be written. Deb said she would take the lead in drafting the guidelines and will have Tom and the City’s Legal Department review them.
Tom mentioned that there needs to be more outreach and advertising about the Calendar in order to get more dates from area organizations. Eileen said she will contact all the City’s youth sports organizations. Deb and the group will continue to spread the word.
Youth Week
The group began discussing some of the ideas mentioned for Youth Week, which was introduced at their last meeting. They all agreed that this was a worthwhile endeavor. The idea of creating three separate age groups was discussed. These groups could be hard to define and may make the planning process for this event a little more difficult. The group thought that holding events for the different age groups should be easy enough without actually defining the age groups. Deb said the YMCA could certainly host a 3 on 3 Basketball Tournament, an open swim and fitness screenings. Tom said he will talk to Paul Van Ness at CinemaSalem about showing films for teens and younger children. Tom was also asked to talk to Shane Rodriguez about having Salem State host a Battle of the Bands at the
college. Other ideas discussed was an open skate time at Salem State College, make your own Sundae On Sunday (Tom will contact Chuck Puleo about this) having local businesses and attractions offer discounts to City youths for that week, and a Kids Scavenger Hunt – wither through Jim McCallister or the local business, Salem Scavenger Hunt, Co.
Deb believed that more people were needed at our meeting to discuss these ideas in more detail as well as to start assigning roles to individuals to carry through on some of the ideas. Tom will check in with other Commission members this week about their availability for the next scheduled meeting.
The Meeting adjourned at 6:50 pm
Meeting minutes recorded by Tom Watkins
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